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Monday, February 8, 2010 6:41 PM EST
Is Rob Ford officially in? Not according to Rob Ford
Kelly Grant
Rob Ford, fresh off a workout late Monday afternoon, was surprised to discover the blogosphere is abuzz with a conservative blogger's report that the Etobicoke councillor is definitely running for mayor.
Stephen Taylor, a founder of bloggingtories.ca, wrote that Mr. Ford confirmed to him he'll be in the race. The report was swiftly picked up here and here.
But Mr. Ford is denying it, at least for now.
"I never told anybody that I'm running," Mr. Ford insisted in an interview. "I tell everyone like I told you and I tell thousands of other people, I'm seriously considering it and I will have my decision made by March. I think I've said that 10,000 times now."
So where did Mr. Taylor's report come from?
"I don't know," Mr. Ford said. "I've talked to so many people, I have no idea who half the people are that I talk to. All I've told everyone is that I'm seriously considering it. I've never announced to anybody that I'm officially running. So if someone says I am running, well they've got misinformation because I'd like to get a tape of me saying that. I know I've never said it. You ask me if I'm running, I say I'm seriously considering it. You know [if you ask], 'is it true that your brother [Doug Ford] is going to run in your ward?' It's a possibility, yes, you know, we're trying to work some things out."
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Taylor's report becomes true in March. Mr. Ford is conducting polls, building a team and seems anxious to go. Watch out Rocco Rossi, you may not have the right side of the spectrum to yourself for much longer ...
Link to this postMonday, February 8, 2010 11:17 AM EST
Campaigns & Elections' Politics mag comes to Canada
Kelly Grant
Venerable U.S. magazine Campaigns & Elections' Politics, is expanding north with a new Canadian digital edition launching next month.
Toronto election watchers will recognize plenty of boldface names in its pages and on its masthead, many of whom have already signed on for the 2010 mayoral race.
Take the editorial advisory board. It features John Capobianco (co-chairing Rocco Rossi's campaign); Robin Sears (working with Adam Giambrone's team), as well as Anie Perrault and Don Guy. Inside you'll find a Warren Kinsella column called "In the War Room," and a Brett Bell column called "Open Source." (Mr. Bell, the principal of Grassroots Online, is staying out of the campaign while he runs the new aggregator Toronto Elections News.) Running the whole show is Bernie Morton of Sussex Strategies, officially undecided about who he'll back in the mayor's race.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 2:10 PM EST
Bills, bills, bills and non-neutered male dogs
Kelly Grant
May I recommend against mainlining the Rogers feed of council this week? You won't get much of a high out of this agenda, coming as it does off a slow December committee cycle.
Then again, you'll want to tune in if you're a fan of such recurring favourites as Law & Order: Adrian Heaps unit; Extreme Makeover: Maclean Home Edition; or The Dog Park Whisperer (in which Paula Fletcher tries to show irate dog owners she's the pack leader.) Or you could just check back here and on Twitter @kellygrant1 for updates.
Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:01 AM EST
Carpenters back Smitherman
Kelly Grant
The Carpenters' District Council of Ontario has endorsed George Smitherman.
It’s the first major endorsement in a campaign where labour support could matter as much as ever, despite new rules banning union donations and a public soured on unions after last summer’s 39-day municipal strike.
The Carpenters' District Council, which represents just under 10,000 members in Toronto, decided late last year to back Mr. Smitherman, but waited to make it official until the candidate did a few weeks ago. The union’s public affairs director Steven Del Duca, a long-time Liberal, said the carpenters selected Mr. Smitherman because of his “strong record.”
“He stressed to us that his number-one priority is job creation,” Mr. Del Duca said.
City Hall wisdom has it that most, if not all, of the public sector unions will back Mr. Giambrone when he joins the race before the end of the month.
Friday, January 15, 2010 4:20 PM EST
Tory bigwig Capobianco joins Rossi camp
Kelly Grant
Rocco Rossi wants you to know he's snagging John Tory refugees too.
John Capobianco of Edelman (who ran and lost federally in '04 and '06 in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, now Michael Ignatieff's ward) has just signed on as campaign co-chair. Mr. Rossi's other co-chair is Vic Gupta of Prime Strategies and his policy chair is John Matheson of Strategy Corp.
His director of media is an interesting choice: Patricia Best, our former Report on Business gossip columnist. (She won't be writing for The Globe while working for Mr. Rossi.)
Mr. Rossi had already won the backing of Rod Phillips, Mel Lastman's first-term chief of staff, and Andy Pringle, a former chief of staff to Mr. Tory.
Mr. Rossi's high-calibre campaign staff suggests he's more than Stephen LeDrew without the bowties.
Lost in coverage of the first major poll of the race was the fact the Mr. Rossi picked up 15 per cent of decided voters. Sure, he's miles behind George Smitherman, but only two points behind TTC Chairman Adam Giambrone, who is expected to declare by the end of the month.
Not bad for a guy who's supposedly unknown outside political backrooms.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 4:50 PM EST
Ralph Lean backs Smitherman
Kelly Grant
It’s been a good day for George Smitherman. First, he wakes up to a poll in The Star that puts him way out in front in the mayor’s race. Now he’s won the backing of Ralph Lean – fundraiser extraordinaire, veteran of almost every municipal campaign since 1980, and rock-ribbed Conservative.
Mr. Lean, who had planned to be John Tory’s fundraising chairman, said he received calls from Mr. Smitherman and Rocco Rossi shortly after Mr. Tory bowed out. Mr. Lean met with both candidates Friday, armed with a checklist. “They both failed one test,” he said, chuckling. “They weren’t Conservative.”
Mr. Rossi and Mr. Smitherman may be Liberals, but they're casting themselves as centre-right candidates. In an interview today, Mr. Lean said he felt confident after speaking to them that they agreed “fiscal responsibility” would be the top issue in the contest. He didn’t have “a negative word” to say about Mr. Rossi (or about any wannabe mayor, for that matter: he even managed to lavish praise on Giorgio Mammoliti.)
So why did Mr. Lean pick Mr. Smitherman? The pair go way back to the days Mr. Smitherman worked in Barbara Hall’s office, but, more important, Mr. Lean canvassed the city’s money men and women and found that, “overwhelmingly, the people I talked to wanted me to back Smitherman.”
Mr. Lean is always eager to tout his fundraising prowess. Others, namely David Miller backers, say the Bay Street lawyer is not the ATM he claims to be. (Mr. Lean, who supported Mr. Miller in 2006, broke publicly with the Mayor after the strike last summer.)
Either way, there are some interesting lessons in Mr. Lean’s choice. Of the more than 100 potential donors he says he’s talked to since Mr. Tory’s exit, the vast majority encouraged him to back Mr. Smitherman. Many of those contacts would be Tories. Rather than search desperately for a credible candidate on the right, it seems Toronto’s Conservatives intend to camp in Mr. Smitherman’s big tent.
Even if Mr. Lean is more ornamental than critical, his support can’t hurt. He’s right about one thing: It’s harder to raise money at the municipal level than it is at the provincial or federal level, especially with new made-in-Toronto rules banning corporate and union donations and capping contributions. The nearly year-long Toronto mayor's race is a marathon, even for champion fundraisers like Mr. Rossi and Mr. Smitherman.
“I told both of them," Mr. Lean said, "If they think it’s going to be easy to raise $1.5-million, they’re wrong.”
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 2:46 PM EST
If any candidate has a better hat, I'll eat mine
Kelly Grant
While the big news today is that Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone has made it official the more amusing news is that JP Pampena has also joined the race for mayor. He's the PR man who acted as spokesman for Jason Wallace during last year's sad and bizarre infant transplant saga at Sick Kids. His entry brings the number of mayoralty candidates to ... 18. Check out the list here.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 2:03 PM EST
Who knew the Toronto elections office doesn't take cheques? Not the budget chief.
Kelly Grant
Budget chief Shelley Carroll kept the press guessing for a few minutes when she arrived at the elections office to register at 11:30 a.m. today.
“What’s it going to be?” one gallery wag quipped as Ms. Carroll whipped out her cheque book, “$100 or $200?”
The long-time Liberal and popular suburban councillor had been mulling entering the mayor’s race, which costs $200 to join.
Monday, January 11, 2010 6:59 PM EST
Mammoliti's old school
Marcus Gee
Giorgio Mammoliti is what the press likes to call “good copy.” So when the Toronto councillor and mayoral hopeful summoned reporters to a media event at his old high school, reporters made the trek to Jane and Finch in a spirit of gleeful anticipation.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 9:53 PM EST
It's electrifying. Really.
Anna Mehler Paperny
Protestors and police clashed. National negotiators conserved energy through sheer climage-negotiating inertia.
But as the clock ticks down on a global climate-change deal, local government representatives drove in an electric-vehicle parade and ended their Copenhagen conference on a self-congratulatory high note Wednesday.
"The world knows that cities are actually forging ahead rapidly," Mayor David Miller said in a conference call with Torontonian journalists (in case you're wondering, his small electric parade Mitsubishi was "excellent").
"I hope that message was loud and clear -- in fact, I’m sure it was -- for the national delegations."
Inside City Hall Contributors
Kelly Grant
I started my career chasing crime and writing editorials at the Windsor Star before moving to Toronto in 2005 to write for the National Post, where I worked as the paper's City Hall reporter.
I moved to The Globe as deputy editor of Globe T.O. in April 2008, became Toronto editor in February of 2009 and returned to City Hall as the Globe's bureau chief in January 2010.
Marcus Gee
I’m one of those rare birds: a native Torontonian. I grew up in Moore Park in North Toronto, lived away for 10 years in Vancouver and Asia, then came back and have been here ever since. Through most of my career at The Globe, which I joined in 1991, I have been writing about foreign affairs, as an editorial writer, columnist and, most recently, Asia business reporter. Now I’m exploring my hometown as a columnist.